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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) kicked off a program seeking ways to convert existing large aircraft into drone carriers that could launch waves of unmanned aircraft a safe distance from a target to carry out a mission and then recover them—all while in flight. DARPA issued a request for information (RFI) kicking off the program November 7.

“We want to find ways to make smaller aircraft more effective, and one promising idea is enabling existing large aircraft, with minimal modification, to become ‘aircraft carriers in the sky’,” Dan Patt, program manager for DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, said in an official statement issued by the agency.

The RFI document says that DARPA is seeking to prove “the feasibility and potential value of the ability to launch and recover volleys of small UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] from one or more existing large platforms (e.g., B-52, B-1, C-130, etc.).” The drones would carry payloads of less than 100 points and would need to be low-cost to be produced in large quantities for the sort of capability DARPA envisions.

For now, all DARPA wants is short technical proposals (of eight pages or less) that provide ideas on the technologies and approaches “that would enable low-cost reusable small UAS platforms and airborne launch and recovery systems that would require minimal modifications of existing large aircraft types,” the best sorts of missions to use such technology for, and outlines for how to turn these ideas into “full-system flight demonstrations within four years,” according to a DARPA statement on the program.

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Sean Gallagher
Sean is Ars Technica's IT and National Security Editor. A former Navy officer, systems administrator, and network systems integrator with 20 years of IT journalism experience, he lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. Emailsean.gallagher@arstechnica.com//Twitter@thepacketrat